


Safehouse

by DesdemonaKaylose



Series: Professional Indescretion [3]
Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, very manly slumber parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 09:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hanna and {...} continue to make the mistake of leaving Conrad somewhere to be "safe". At least this time nothing tries to kill him except his own inept emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safehouse

It was about midnight on Youknowthe Street (so called because even the annals of public record couldn't seem to find any point in the history of the city where that street had been given an official name), and it was not quite silent. In between dumpsters, three nervous figures were slinking towards what would hopefully prove to be sanctuary. One of them, the tallest, was attempting to hide his eerily glowing eyes behind a pair of curved shades. The effect was deeply disconcerting, and only served to make him more of a spectacle—or it would have, at any rate, if there had been other pedestrians that night on Youknowthe Street.

They approached a door that didn't seem to appreciate being approached.

Conrad was the third of their trio, trailing just a little behind his friends. Far enough to effectively telegraph a sulking and reluctant attitude, not so far that he could get lost coming round the corner. This golden ratio of distance was a work of trial and error over the course of many many midnights.

This had not been his idea. It was very important to maintain that this had not been his idea, because as long as it hadn't been his idea he had the freedom to go along with it. The truth of the matter was, he could have thought of something better, or at least different, if he had really wanted to.

But here they were. Make of that what you will.

Hanna pushed the door open. The darkness gave way to a sickly yellow light, and the three of them disappeared into the office.

"Worth?" Hanna called, unzipping his windbreaker. "Hellooooo? We've got Connie and we really need to get moving!"

There was an annoyed sound from behind one half-closed door, and then Worth stepped out with a box half his size squeezed in a vice grip between his skinny arms. You could tell exactly how skinny, in fact, because the only things standing between an observer and his skin were thin strips of carelessly wrapped bandages. Gone was the coat with the fur cuffs, gone was the denim jacket with the fur collar. Between the bend of the elbow and the loose flap of olive colored cotton, a pale band of human skin could be seen.

Conrad swallowed. He felt a sudden kinship with 19th century gentlemen realizing for the first time that ladies, against all previous evidence, do in fact have ankles.

"Well," said Worth, dropping his box onto the front desk, which wheezed dangerously, "if it ain't witness protection come aknockin on my door. What can I do ya for officers?"

"Oh come on Doc," Hanna sighed, "it's just one night. Look, you can have him help you clean the place up, seriously, I think I'm getting staph just standing here."

Worth grunted, peeling back the packaging tape on the huge box. "I ain't makin ya visit me. Yer suddenly comin down with a case a the squeams, why don't ya see a real doctor?"

Hanna rolled his eyes. "I'm just trying to find a silver lining for you. Come on, it'll be fun. You'll have company." His face lit up, and he swung an arm around Conrad's shoulder. "It'll be like a slumber party! Yeah! You can tell ghost stories and, uh, talk about girls, and prank call people, it'll be great. Living with Horatio is like a slumber party every night I highly recommend it."

Conrad and the doctor gave Hanna identical looks of horrified disbelief.

Five minutes later, Hanna and his shadow had made their escape, and it was just the two of them in the office as Worth unpacked clumps of bubble wrap and Conrad watched the faint flexing of forearms through thin layers of cloth. What were the bandages for? There didn't seem to be any gauze padding or any kind of thickness under that first layer, and Worth moved with a thoughtless kind of grace that belied any injury he might be hiding underneath.

"What color ya want yer toenails?" Worth said, after a while. "We got doublebubble pink and cherry jubilee, or is that too slutty fer ya."

"Ha ha," Conrad replied, arms crossed. "I'm afraid I forgot my cucumber slices at home."

"Well Monty used the last a my good eyeshadow, the cunt, so I just don't know what we're gonna do now."

Conrad felt his lip twitch upwards. He bit down on it.

The box Worth was unpacking seemed to be filled with odds and ends of completely disparate origins—there was a throw pillow, a case of table knives, and what looked like a tiny carburetor, just to name a few—but he was moving through the collection with a directness that indicated specific purpose. He must have gone through a few similar boxes before Conrad arrived.

"So what's so bloody necessary about holing up in my office for the next twennyfour hours?" the doctor asked. "Hanna's roof finally cave in?"

Conrad pulled up his shoulders a little bit. "My apartment isn't safe," he said, repeating exactly what they had told the doctor over the phone hours ago. "Anyone could get inside."

"Yeah," Worth said. "Ya tol me. What I mean is, why you ain't just stayin with Hanna? Now there's a kid knows how ter slumber party. He's human, he's got invitation. Everyone knows vampires can't go where they ain't invited."

Conrad scowled. "Yeah," he said, "everyone knows, including the vampires. You think after a load of bloody centuries they haven't worked out how to get around it?"

Worth looked up. "How'zat then?"

Conrad threw his arms out. "How should I know! Nobody tells me a damn thing!"

At that moment, Worth seemed to have found whatever he was looking for because he thrust a smaller cardboard box into the air with a triumphant "Ha!" and kicked the larger box off his desk with one black shoe. It landed heavily on the floor.

"What's… that?"

Worth paused mid-triumph and peered at his guest with narrow eyes. "Nothin," he said. "Don't touch anythin, I'll be right back."

Then he and the small box scurried into a room at the very back of the hall, leaving Conrad disgruntled and out of place in the lobby of the office. The dead potted plant radiated disapproval. Conrad sighed.

On the one hand, he hadn't felt this uncomfortable in a room since he accidentally walked into a self help group for house wives. On the other hand, he had made a joke and Worth had seemed to roll with it. There was a delicate balancing act going on here, and the most challenging part of it was to make sure no one saw him wobble.

"Spin th'bottle," Worth called, as he ducked back into the hallway.

Conrad looked up. "Excuse me?"

"Wot, ya chicken? Bgawk. Fine, how about Truth'r Dare, Sandra Dee?"

Conrad looked wildly around the room for something else to focus on. There was nothing except a girly magazine pin-up which felt, as far as Conrad was concerned, much too intimate for a public room.

"I can't think of a dare that would surprise you," Conrad muttered, hands pointedly shoved in pockets. "Shameless people take all the fun out of it."

Worth shrugged, a little pleased around the eyes. "Well if yer too scared ta play then I guess I win by default."

He was back to rooting around in the box, although this time he was packing loose objects back into its monstrous depths. With the doctor's eyes back on a task, Conrad found it a little easier to move his mouth.

"I'm not scared," he said, an anxious flutter of hope battering the inside of his ribcage. "What do you think I am, twelve?"

"Eh?" Worth looked up briefly from his box. "Fine. Truth'r dare, Sandy."

"…Dare?"

Worth smiled, but it wasn't the kind of smile that said "gosh, aren't we going to be swell pals?". He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "I dare ya ter take a mosey on into yonder bathroom. Have fun."

One minute later Conrad really, really wished he hadn't.

Worth was cackling as he taped up the last flap of his monster box. It was all well and fine for him, after all, wasn't it?

"Your turn," Conrad growled, back firmly against the bathroom door just in case anything tried to push its way out after him. "Make my bloody night."

"Hmmm. Truth."

Conrad felt his lip curl up into a half-snarl. That weasel.

"Fine. If you're so great and clever, how come you're a gross bachelor living in a rundown office the mafia abandoned in the seventies?"

Worth lifted his eyebrows, visibly amused. "That there rings of what we in th'educated community like ter call a rhetorical question."

The doctor had the huge box hoisted up in his arms, and while Conrad was fuming silently he disappeared into the same storage room he had originally wandered out of. When he reappeared, he had his lab coat thrown over one nearly-bare arm.

"Now, see, yer missin out on a prime opportunity fer quality gossip here," he said, pulling on the furred abomination. "I'm a veritable treasure trove a fun facts about our mutual circle of buddies. Go on, ask me anythin. I'm under oath yanno."

Conrad rolled his eyes, but slipped closer. "How'd you meet Hanna, then?"

Worth half-nodded, almost approvingly. Worth told him. It's not a pretty story.

"What about his chest?" Conrad asked, horrified but fascinated.

Worth held up one thin hand. "First'v all, that ain't my business. Second'v all, yer skippin turns. It's my go."

"Oh," Conrad said. "Truth then."

Worth was sitting on the edge of his desk now, legs crossed in their diagonal journey to the floor. Conrad followed them up into the shadowy folds of hip seams and white cloth.

"Ya got yer mack on fer Hanna?"

If Conrad had been drinking a glass of water he would have sprayed it straight across the room. As it was, he took such a step back he slammed bodily into the wall.

"What?"

Worth sniffed. "I kin spot yer type a mile away, Achenleck. Just doin some math."

Faint through the haze of shock, Conrad did think about it. The option had never really occurred to him. Toni, sure, he'd felt an embarrassed sort of interest at various points during their conversations. Even Veser, he had maybe once considered that during the weeks when the younger man had been living with him. But Hanna? Hanna was a different sort of animal altogether.

"No," he finally replied. "I can honestly say that never crossed my mind."

He didn't add that it was kind of nice, in a terrifying way, to talk to someone who knew without needing to be told.

The game went on, although by all rights it should have stopped after that, after the novelty wore off. It was true that Worth knew an awful lot about everyone, not just Conrad, and the depth and breadth of that knowledge was a little bit terrifying. He hardly ever even left his office, how could he possibly know all that?

So late on into the night that it was starting to be early, they got a customer. Although Conrad would have been happy to lurk innocuously in the corner until it was all sorted out, especially after what happened the last time he offered to get involved in a surgery, Worth insisted on carrying on the game over his patient's head—pausing only to ask a few pointed medical questions about bones and allergies and exactly when that credit card expired. Conrad mumbled his answers, hideously embarrassed, and pointedly selected a dare on his next round.

The dare involved stitches. It's better not to go into any further details.

Sometime around five AM, Conrad called a halt to the enterprise. The sun would be up in not too long, and he had had a rather busy evening before arriving in the clinic.

"Last go," he said, dropping his swiffer into a trash bag. "Truth or dare, Worth?"

"Truth," the doctor replied, feet up on the desk in front of him.

"Why are we playing this game? You know it's stupid, I know it's stupid, but we've been doing it for hours and you still haven't given up."

Worth shrugged, his expression thoughtful. "Yer gonna waste yer last question on something like that? C'mon, ya kin do better'n that."

Hours of conversation had fine tuned Conrad's understanding of the man in front of him somewhat. Some things, things that would have been a murky no-man's-land yesterday, were starting to come clear around the edges. It occurred to Conrad that Worth did not want to answer the question, for whatever reason. That, at least, was still as much of a mystery as it ever could have been.

"That's what I'm asking," he insisted.

Worth grunted. "Fuckin lame. I take it back. Gimme a dare."

Conrad's mouth dropped. "You can't do that! That's against the rules!"

"Kiddie game rules, Achenleck. Who's gonna enforce 'em? Ya gonna call the police?"

Conrad clutched at his forehead. What an utterly typical douche. If Conrad had tried that an hour ago, he'd have gotten his ass verbally handed to him. But it was late, and Worth was Worth, and Conrad had been contemplating a dare all night.

He didn't take a deep breath, and he didn't swallow, because he was dead now and people noticed those things.

"Take off your jacket," he said, slowly, "and unbind those bandages."

For a moment, Conrad was certain that the doctor was going to argue. You could see it on his lips, in his shoulders, like he was about to effectively pull down the curtains between them. And then—god only knows why—he shrugged.

He peeled off his coat. He unbuttoned his overshirt. He undid the wrappings around his forearms. White twists piled on top the desk like long snakes coiling before an attack.

Worth lifted his hands, fingers spread wide, and exposed his arms.

"People ask too many questions," he said, giving Conrad a pointed look.

Conrad's mouth was dry. It wasn't horror, really, although the sensation wasn't all that different. Recognition, that was part of it. Recognition, and surprise, and—

Conrad did swallow, now-

And the feeling of having accidentally touched something that he should not have touched. Accidental intimacy, a hand where it wasn't meant to touch. The knowledge that, whether you regretted it or not, you could never not know ever again.

Worth left the bandages where they fell, instead digging out a cigarette and a novelty lighter in the shape of something not suitable for polite society. "Check the storage room," he said, flame blossoming in his hand. "Ya need anythin, please hesitate ter bother me."

In the storage room, otherwise stuffed with everything from hanging skeletons to upturned couches, someone had cleared out a section of the floor that was now filled with cheap suede and black plastic. An inflatable mattress. Conrad kicked his way over to it and inspected the edges. It looked clean. It looked well used, but well maintained. Practical. His foot crunched something papery, and he reached down to lift a familiar cardboard box off the ground.

Worth set this up for him.

Conrad sat down in the middle of the mattress, and wondered an awful lot of things.


End file.
